Victorian Urban Legends: Nose Duel May 28, 2022
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my forthcoming book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or German sources… I’ll be grateful and you’ll be credited. drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com***
In a duel with swords injuries to the nose were not uncommon and on occasion all or part of the nose could be severed. Famously, the great astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) had lost most of his nose in a duel with his third cousin (over who was the better mathematician): Brahe wore a brass nose for the rest of his life.[1] There are several nineteenth-century examples of the same traumatic injury being inflicted on duellists.[2] And, not surprisingly, a story seems to have evolved in Germany – where there was a strong tradition of student duelling – involving a sword fight and a severed nose. In this tale a duellist cuts off his opponent’s nose and the nose falls to the floor. In normal circumstances it might have been possible to reattach the nose. But a dog gobbles down the nose and the losing duellist’s face is ruined. This story is particularly poignant given that one of the reasons that German student duelled was to earn attractive facial scars that they could carry through life. They did not expect to be disfigured.
The earliest reference I have found in English is from 1841 and a British visitor to Heidelberg University:
A duellist had his nose cut off, and a large bull-dog which was in the room… greedily swallowed it; so greedily, that it was impossible to prevent it.[3]
We read, meanwhile, in 1858, in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, that there is a story ‘which is current as a tradition among the students’ at Heidelberg of a dog swallowing a lopped off nose. The dog was immediately killed and the nose was retrieved and reattached to the duellist’s face.[4]
The most famous version of the Nose Duel was published by the French novelist Edmond About in 1862 in his novel Le nez d’ un notaire. In this version a duellist’s nose is eaten by a cat. After a long chase it escapes – ‘Mais le chat n’était pas d’humeur à se laisser prendre’ – and the notaire has to have a nose transplant.[5] In a version of this tale, meanwhile from 1875, published in a British newspaper, the nose is eaten by a dog, but then retrieved. Unfortunately, in the anxiety to get the nose back onto the victim’s face the doctor makes a mistake and when the bandage is removed the nose is the wrong way up.[6] This recalls a story from 1860 about a British officer, Major Beale, who had also had his nose sewn on upside down after losing it in a duel: in that case, though, no dog intervened.[7] Frustratingly I have found no early nineteenth-century German version of this legend: though these will very likely have been published.
[1] Lee ‘Tycho’; Rasmussen ‘Was he’, ?? for brass composition of nose.
[2] ‘The day…’; ‘A Duellist’.
[3] Howitt, The Student Life, 167.
[4] Adam, ‘Medical Notes’, 320
[5] About, Le Nez, 82-85.
[6] ‘Saxon’.
[7] ‘A Nose Story’.
